All posts tagged Bad Parents

Last night reminded me again that I had won the BEST Parenting BLOG and not the prize for BEST PARENTING Blog.

We went over to our mates Joyce and Leon for a braai last night, and met up with Lorna and Peter as well.

Cape Town is experiencing what can only be described as a heat wave at the moment. If you do not have an air conditioner and access to a fridge with cold beer and a pool, then life right now is not dissimilar from Hades for you. It is absolutely scorching.

Last night when we arrived at our friends home, at 6pm the temperature was 34 degrees.

At about 10pm I walked into the pool fully clothed and the temperature was easily 30 degrees then. It was not hot as much as it was f*kn cooking!

Georgia has slept in her costume for two nights running!

Anyway back to my bad parenting moment.

Great evening, great food, great wine, possibly slightly too much wine.

But it was fine as Kennith had an ear infection and was on antibiotics so he was limiting his alcohol intake, and automatically made him the responsible parent and designated driver.

Kennith had also packed two bottles of wine for me – for one evening out! I felt it was slightly excessive, but I also did not want to disappoint him. Two bottles in one evening out is a challenge. It is not impossible, but it is a challenge.

Any the who. Great dinner, great wine, then when it was all over we went home.

Kids were exhausted with the heat and they had been swimming a lot, so they asked to sleep in the lounge.

Considering the couches still had their bedding on them from the night before, it seemed a sensible solution to just agree to let them sleep in the tv room again!

Our standards have really slipped during this school holiday. I am not sure when the last time my kids had a bath – and Georgia is wearing a plait in her hair that I did on the weekend (today is Thursday!) – so that sort of comments on how personal hygiene has sort of got lost along the way.

Any the way, kids in bed, Isabelle into her cot. She went to bed with just a nappy on as it was too hot to even consider putting anything else on her.

She fell asleep, or so I thought. I stumbled to bed, put on my Ackermans nightshirt and fell into a I-ate-too-much-chicken-and-have-definitely-not-drunk-too-much-wine pile.

I fell asleep for what felt like five minutes and then I heard Isabelle screaming like she was being strangled. I fell out of bed, picked myself off the floor, sort of fell over myself getting to her room, and burst into her room.

Arrived, and she was very upset (not because I had arrived you understand, she was upset and then I arrived – sorry I still feel a bit drunk clearly).

I proceeded to sit with her and rock her for what felt like an hour. When her eyelids became heavy and I felt her breathing sort of slow (or my eyelids got heavy and my breathing started to slow). I placed her back into her cot and headed back to my bed.

Repeated the same procedure of falling into bed in a heap. Only to be woken before I had actually slipped into rapid eye movement, by more screaming from Isabelle.

At this point I decided I was going to do the parenting-with-tough-love and would leave her to scream it out. Eventually she will get tired and go to sleep.

I was desperate to sleep, so the room would stop spinning! I lay there and tried to doze, but the screaming – she was screaming a loud, I was screaming on the inside – just would not stop.

I slammed my feet onto the floor as I heaved my mass out of bed. Not only was I really tired, but now I was getting annoyed.

I march to Isabelle’s room to give her a firm talking to. I flick on the passage light, open her door with just that too much force (so as to make an impression that I am clearly not happy), I enter her room wearing a very disapproving look on my face!

Only to find that she has caught her fat chubby leg between the bars of her cot and is screaming like a banshee!

I felt worse than dog sh*t left in the sun too long! I freed her chubby little leg, rolled her on her side and patted her a bit until she dosed off, castigating myself for being such a bad person as I had let her scream while she was in distress!

Of course she proceeded to scream as soon as I got back to bed. Of course now I jumped up like a Jack in a Box and did at least another four visits to her room.

Even when she stopped screaming and eventually fell asleep, the scream was still ricocheting in my head so much so, that I thought she was still screaming (even when I checked on her and found her sleeping three more times!)

I woke up before 6am this morning, feeling like death, and then because I could still “hear the screaming” I went to check on her again – and of course she was sleeping spread out like a Snow Angel in her cot, quietly sleeping as babies do.

I am now serving my penance. I really ate-too-much-chicken and have a pounding head-ache. I am sleep deprived. And to show me that karma is a bitch, my right contact lens has got lost behind my eyeball, so it is like the itchy-and-scratchy show in my right eye-ball with reduced vision!

Fabulous!

(I have also just sniffed a bunch of my hair, that smells faintly like urine, so clearly at some point Isabelle also wee’d on me, which now appears to be in my hair!)

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